


An Overdue Conversation

by Pondfrost (AkitsuneLune)



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Apologies, Deleted Scenes, F/F, Family, Forgiveness, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Talking, The BlossomIvy is somewhat background, nature metaphors, the focus is on Briarlight confronting Millie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26780095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkitsuneLune/pseuds/Pondfrost
Summary: “You hurt Blossomfall,” Briarlight mews as gently as she can. She doesn’t want to punish her mother, or lecture her, or drive her into self-pity. She just wants her to know.
Relationships: Blossomfall/Ivypool (Warriors), Briarlight & Blossomfall, Briarlight & Millie
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	An Overdue Conversation

“Have another bite.”

“I’m not hungry,” Millie grunts.

Briarlight tucks her forepaws beneath her chest, and looks at the entrance of camp. Blossomfall is still out with Ivypool, and Briarlight hopes to resolve this before her sister returns.

Millie paws the mouse that Blossomfall caught for her aside and Briarlight lets out a long breath before she chooses her next words. Millie’s breath rattles like wind through dead branches in leaf-bare.

“Mom, Jayfeather says it’s probably going to keep getting worse,” she says.

Millie dips her head. She’s known it was coming for a long time, Briarlight thinks. She doesn’t pace restlessly around the camp like she used to when she first retired, and seems to be settling into her time as an elder. Briarlight has been very careful not to hover over her or try to limit what her mother does. And now Briarlight is conflicted.

“I wanted to…” she hesitates, rolling her shoulders as she does when she’s nervous. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Something to get off your chest before I finally go?” Millie rasps, a teasing gleam in her eye.

“Well, sort of.”

Millie’s gaze takes on that nervous-pitying look that makes Briarlight’s fur itch. “Are you well? I hope you’re not sick too!”

“No, Mom, I’m okay.” It is possibly the phrase Briarlight has repeated the most in her entire life. Other than maybe ‘ _Your snoring kept me up_ ’ directed at Jayfeather when he presses her on why she seems downcast.

“Then…? What is it?”

Blossomfall’s scent drifts into Briarlight’s nose, and Briarlight closes her eyes. _You can’t avoid it any longer,_ Briarlight scolds herself. _For her sake, if not yours._

“You need to make things right with Blossomfall.”

Millie blinks, then frowns. The mouse lies at her paws, nearly untouched. “What do you mean? What’s wrong with Blossomfall?”

The instant presumption of blame directed at Briarlight’s sister makes Briarlight want to do something violent, like shred a leaf. Or poke Jayfeather. Instead, she shakes her head. “It’s not Blossomfall, it’s…” _It’s both of you,_ her mind suggests, eternally searching for something that will keep the peace. _It’s what’s between you. It’s no cat’s fault._

“It’s you, Mom.”

There’s no time anymore, though. The Great Battle taught them that much, and the Great Storm after it. Her brother’s apprentice, Seedpaw, so small and full of good cheer… and gone in a breath. _I can’t keep the peace anymore if it means hiding the truth,_ Briarlight thinks, then remembers long days of watching Jayfeather at his work. _You have to pull the thorn out of the paw, even though it’ll bleed._

“What? What do you mean?”

“It’s you,” Briarlight repeats. Blossomfall has returned through the thorn tunnel, her pelt pressed to Ivypool’s, though she hasn’t come over to them yet. Briarlight doubles down. “When I got hurt, I thought my whole life was over. I tried to keep up my spirits, but sometimes I’d lie awake at night and think about how jealous I was of Bumblepaw and Blossompaw, and how it wasn’t fair at all.”

She feels her tail droop at the memory. Sympathy fills Millie’s eyes, and Briarlight’s pelt begins to itch again.

“And…” _Be diplomatic,_ she reminds herself. _Don’t make any cat feel bad._ “And sometimes… you would say things… that would make it worse.”

Millie is shocked, then horrified. “I never meant to!” her mother exclaims. “I’m so sorry, Briarlight. I never meant to make you feel as though your life was over.”

Briarlight dips her head, avoiding her mother’s gaze of consternation. “I know you only wanted what was best for me. And that you were scared and upset. I don’t know what it would be like to see my kit suffer that way.”

Gratification floods her mother’s expression, and Briarlight wonders if saying the right thing is actually the wrong thing to do now.

“What does this have to do with Blossomfall?” Millie asks, sending a nearly-suspicious look at her tortoiseshell daughter, who has settled down in the sunlight with Ivypool on the other side of the camp. “She didn’t make you feel that way too, did she?”

“No, never,” Briarlight murmurs, a nostalgic warmth blossoming in her chest as she recalls how Blossomfall and Bumblestripe cheered for her at her ceremony. How excited Blossomfall was to share prey with her afterward. How fiercely her sister defended her when Millie stood outside the den with an expression of hopelessness.

How Blossomfall broke down at Briarlight’s paws after the Great Battle, begging her forgiveness. Begging and explaining and apologizing. Her chest tightens at the memory.

“Then?” Millie repeats.

Blossomfall hadn’t said that she deserved to go to the Dark Forest, but Briarlight saw it in her eyes; the thorn-sharp loathing directed inwards that had tormented Blossomfall until she was forced to look to her family for healing. _We were all named wrong,_ Briarlight thinks. _Bumblestripe’s prickly as a briar when he’s grumpy, I’m about as dangerous as a flower, and Blossomfall… she’s a bumblebee, coming to perch by her family, to help us and to nourish herself. She finds her strength in her kin._ She looks at her mother again.

“You hurt Blossomfall,” Briarlight mews as gently as she can. She doesn’t want to punish her mother, or lecture her, or drive her into self-pity. She just wants her to know. “She felt like you didn’t care about her.”

Millie’s fur fluffs up. “That’s not true! I cared about her, and I still care about her. But she didn’t need me and you did.”

_I didn’t need you when you said I was broken and thought I couldn’t hear._

 _I didn’t need you when you said it hurt_ you _to watch me haul myself to the fresh-kill pile every day._

Briarlight’s nose stings.

_I didn’t need you when you hurt my sister._

“I understand you felt that way,” she says carefully. “But… try to see it from her point of view. I know you wanted to take care of me, Mom, but Blossomfall felt like it crossed into… not caring about her anymore. Like you didn’t care when she got hurt, or was sad, or…”

“She needed to grow up,” Millie growls and Briarlight’s stomach twists a little. Millie is getting defensive, and this is not going the way Briarlight hoped it would. “I can’t be mothering her every heartbeat of every day; she’s a grown warrior.”

_The way you did me?_ “And she didn’t expect that of you,” Briarlight says. Her voice is _so_ gentle and soft now it’s practically a murmur. “But there were times when she needed you.”

“ _You_ needed me,” Millie repeats.

Briarlight’s supply of gentleness has run out. “That’s not enough, Mom. It’s not enough to excuse you ignoring her.”

Millie’s eyes widen at the sharpness of the statement. “I didn’t ignore her! If she had needed me, I would have been there for her.”

_Not ‘I was there for her when she needed me.’ Because she thinks Blossomfall never needed her. Because she didn’t notice. Because she ignored her._ Briarlight wills herself to stay non confrontational.

“I think you should apologize, and try to make amends.” Briarlight touches her mother’s paw with her own.

“Did she ask you to say this?” Millie’s look is pointed.

“No!” Briarlight is stung at the suggestion. “Of course not. You know better than any cat that she doesn’t speak up when some cat has hurt her, she just… absorbs it and keeps hurting in silence. She would never ask for herself.”

“She betrayed the Clan,” Millie says, her look clouding over. “Briarlight, your sister trained in the Dark Forest. How can I forgive her, when she put _you_ in danger?”

A growl rises in Briarlight’s throat. It’s not a sensation she’s familiar with, like angry bees in her chest, and she stamps it down. “She switched sides when the battle started, Mom, every cat knows that.”

“She’s still hanging around her _Clanmates_ ,” Millie comments, settling down and tucking her tail over her paws. Briarlight looks at Ivypool, then back at her mother.

_Because they’re the only cats that understand each other_ , she thinks. _Because they know half the Clan still doesn’t trust them, of which Blossomfall’s_ own mother _is a part._ Then, wryly, she thinks, _Because according to Blossomfall, Ivypool is fierce as a blizzard, as beautiful as the dawn, and clever as a fox._

“She needs you,” Briarlight finally says. “She needs you, Mom.”

Millie’s eyes round, almost guilty, then her mother shakes her head and it’s gone. “Blossomfall doesn’t need me, Briarlight. She’s a self-sufficient she-cat.”

_And I’m not,_ is the silent echo in Briarlight’s head, as always, and she brushes it aside. “You don’t—” Briarlight swallows the words. _You don’t know her at all, then,_ is what she wants to say. “Blossomfall needs her family. That’s why she started training in the Dark Forest, and that’s why she’s so hurt that you aren’t there for her, and _that’s_ why I _know_ that she would never, _ever_ do anything to hurt me.”

Her voice trembles and Millie blinks, stubborn as a thick root. _Bumblestripe got it from her, Blossomfall got it from her, and I think I got it too,_ she thinks, and it is bittersweet. _None of us want to change, do we?_

“What do you want me to do?” Millie asks eventually, her jaw still set defensively.

Briarlight shakes her head. “Just… just tell her that you love her and that you’re sorry for any time she felt as though you didn’t care.”

Millie looks up and catches Blossomfall’s gaze across the clearing.

“Please, Mom,” Briarlight murmurs.

Millie grits her teeth, and then mews, “Alright.”

Briarlight’s ears flick up. “Really?”

“Yes,” Millie says. “You’re right, Briarlight. If nothing else, I don’t want any cat making a scene at my funeral.” Her eyes gleam again with a hint of her old dry wit.

Briarlight lets out a long, long breath of relief. _The thorn’s out. I hope it’ll help Blossomfall. It takes a lot for any of us to change, but Millie’s willing. That has to be a good omen._ As Millie stands and murmurs something to Blossomfall on the other side of the clearing, Briarlight looks at Ivypool, whose gaze follows Briarlight’s sister as she leaves camp with Millie.

_Well, I guess this is as good a time as any._ Briarlight gets to her paws and begins to pull her way across to where Ivypool sits in the shade of the ferns. Ivypool stands when she sees Briarlight coming, but Briarlight twitches an ear, signalling for her to sit again.

“Briarlight.” Ivypool sounds almost suspicious, but Briarlight’s learned that Ivypool sounds like that when she talks to most anybody. Briarlight eases herself down next to her and feels a bit sad at the idea. _How often does she get to really relax, if not with her Clanmates surrounding her on a new-leaf day?_

“How’s Blossomfall?” Briarlight nudges her.

Ivypool’s eyes round like she’s been caught. “Huh?”

Briarlight grins, and stretches out her forepaws, enjoying the pull in her shoulders. “We’re a bit of a feather-brained family, but I, for one, would be happy to have you.”

Ivypool begins grooming her chest-fur intently, hiding her embarrassed gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Briarlight purrs. For all her scars, suspicious looks, and sleeplessness, Briarlight thinks Ivypool is secretly a flower under all that. She drew in Blossomfall, after all. Briarlight glances at her, and sees that Ivypool is also studying her out of the corner of her eye in a sort of guardedly curious way.

“I told our mother to apologize,” Briarlight admits.

Ivypool nods, and then finally smiles. _Yes, definitely a flower,_ Briarlight thinks. A warm look from Ivypool is like a snowdrop pressing up through the earth after a long leaf-bare. “Good. I think it’s overdue.”

Briarlight hums. “Are you hungry? I don’t think Millie ate much of her mouse.”

“Blossomfall brought me a vole,” Ivypool whispers, as if she’s afraid to be overheard. Briarlight stifles another purr. _Well, if Blossomfall’s forcing prey on her, then I guess she’s really an official member of the family._

“I’m glad,” Briarlight says, and nuzzles Ivypool before the scarred she-cat can skitter away. _There’s no time anymore, and I’m glad Blossomfall’s found her. I’m glad Millie’s making amends._ It’s new-leaf, and for the first time in a long time, Briarlight feels hopeful.


End file.
